Lead Software Engineer, ACAI Travel
€60-80k
+ Bonus + Equity
More information about location
AI for travel operations
Open for applications
AI for travel operations
1-20 employees
Open for applications
€60-80k
+ Bonus + Equity
More information about location
1-20 employees
Company mission
To reshape the foundations of travel operations with AI-powered technologies that reflect the disruptive era we're living in.
Role
Who you are
- ♀️ Extreme Ownership: You challenge specs, suggest alternatives, and drive ideas to completion. You own customer success end-to-end
- 🤩 Product Obsession: You ask "why?" relentlessly and dive into user behavior, business metrics, and customer feedback to understand real problems
- Optimistic Collaboration: You make everyone—engineers AND customers—more excited about building. You help ideas get off the ground
- Authentic Communication: You build great relationships with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Customers love working with you
- 👷♂️ Craft Excellence: Joy comes from the craft itself. You love both solving customer problems and writing beautiful code
- 🎯 Customer Empathy: You genuinely care about customer success and can translate their pain points into technical requirements
- 5+ years of backend engineering experience with distributed systems
- Strong proficiency in Go (or similar systems languages like Rust, C++, Java)
- Experience with gRPC, MongoDB, and modern cloud platforms
- Deep understanding of system design, APIs, and integration patterns
- Proven track record of building production systems that customers rely on
- Experience working directly with enterprise customers or technical stakeholders
- Ability to lead technical discovery sessions and solution design workshops
- Strong presentation and communication skills—you can explain complex technical concepts simply
- Track record of translating customer requirements into technical solutions
- Comfortable with pre-sales technical discussions and proof-of-concept work
- Experience with Travel Industry systems (GDS, APIs, integrations) is a major plus
- Deep interest in business models, user behavior, and success metrics
- Track record of challenging specifications and bringing product ideas
- Experience working with product managers, designers, and customer success teams
- Ability to make pragmatic tradeoffs between customer needs and technical constraints
- Self-directed with a "yes, and" mentality toward customer requests
- Authentic communicator who builds customer confidence and trust
- Intrinsically motivated by customer success and building great products
- Optimistic problem-solver who generates enthusiasm in customer conversations
- Comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities based on customer needs
What the job involves
- We're looking for an exceptional Lead Engineer who thrives at the intersection of deep technical expertise and customer engagement
- This is a 50/50 role: you'll spend half your time architecting and building solutions in Go, and the other half working directly with customers—understanding their needs, designing technical solutions, and ensuring successful implementations
- This isn't your typical engineering role
- You'll be the technical face of Acai to our customers, translating complex business problems into elegant technical solutions while writing production code yourself
- You'll bridge the gap between what customers need and what our platform can deliver
- Work directly with customers to understand their business needs and technical requirements
- Design technical solutions that leverage our AI platform to solve customer problems
- Lead discovery sessions, architecture discussions, and technical workshops with customers
- Become a trusted technical advisor to our key accounts
- Translate customer feedback into product improvements and new features
- Support customer implementations and troubleshoot complex integration issues
- Travel occasionally to customer sites for strategic engagements
- Design and implement scalable Go services (gRPC, MongoDB) based on customer needs
- Work across AI workflows, automation logic, and integrations
- Make architecture decisions that balance customer requirements with platform scalability
- Own features end-to-end—from customer discovery to production deployment
- Ensure code quality through testing, code reviews, and best practices
- Collaborate with product and engineering teams to prioritize customer-driven features
- 3 months: Build deep relationships with 2-3 key customers, ship meaningful features based on customer feedback, establish yourself as a trusted technical advisor
- 6 months: Own the technical relationship with our top accounts, deliver customer-driven solutions that improve retention and expansion, contribute significantly to product roadmap
- 12 months: Be the go-to technical leader for customer solutions, drive measurable customer success outcomes, influence product strategy based on customer insights
- Reports to: CTO (based in Barcelona)
- Collaboration: Work closely with Product, Customer Success, Sales, and engineering teams in Barcelona, New York, and Pune
Our take
Acai Travel is an AI-driven platform designed to optimize travel operations. Building on the success of their previous ventures, the founders aim to tackle inefficiencies that have worsened due to industry changes and the rising demand following the pandemic.
The platform aims to cut costs by up to half for agencies by automating routine tasks and boosting efficiency. Its approach provides agencies with insights into travel behavior, helping optimize services and predict upcoming trends.
Early results show a 20% reduction in handling times, with the potential for valuable savings as the full suite of products is rolled out. The company has already secured substantial funding and attracted clients like Kiwi.com and lastminute.com. Acai plans to invest in enhancing its platform and double agent efficiency.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (1 round)
Nov 2024
$4m
SEED
Total funding: $4m
Company HQ
Upper West Side, New York, NY
Leadership
Riccardo Vittoria
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously co-founded 30SecondsToFly and served as the CEO until it was acquired by American Express. They also founded MatrimoniFotoRoma and worked at American Express GBT as the Global Director of Chat and AI, and as the Head of Artificial Intelligence.
Henry chen Weinstein
(Co-Founder & Executive Chairman)Also the founder of Vine Stone Ventures and Travel Tech Nation. Previously the founder of GSC where they served as the Managing Director and Chairman, co-founder and CEO of Cockpit Innovation, and founder of Vertical Engine.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 1 more job at ACAI Travel